Davidson and Skepticism: How not to Respond to the Skeptic

Abstract

In his defense of a coherence theory of truth and knowledge, Donald Davidson insists that (i) we must take the objects of a belief to be the causes of that belief, and (ii) given the nature of beliefs, most of our beliefs are veridical. As result, a response to skepticism is provided. If most of our beliefs turn out to be true, global skepticism is ultimately incoherent. In this paper, I argue that, despite the many attractions that a coherence theory has, a response to skepticism is not among them. After distinguishing three forms of skepticism (global skepticism, Pyrrhonian
skepticism and lottery skepticism), I argue that none of them is affected by Davidson’s strategy.